Culture
How ‘Jaws’ Made a Template for the Modern Movie Blockbuster
Fifty years ago, Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” terrified moviegoers. Its shocks still reverberate.
Its blueprint is now so recognizable that you have probably seen “Jaws” — even if you haven’t actually seen “Jaws.”
Here’s a breakdown of the plot (spoilers abound):
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Those nine points are what make “Jaws” “Jaws.” Put together the right way, they maximize suspense and spectacle without losing the human stakes.
“Jaws” didn’t invent the creature feature. By 1975, there had been 15 Godzilla movies and four King Kongs, as well as dozens of Hammer and Universal horror films, including “Creature from the Black Lagoon” in 1954. And Mr. Spielberg’s film included techniques popularized by other filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock and the famed B-movie producer Roger Corman.
Even if other films put similar elements into practice, none were as phenomenally successful as “Jaws,” boosted by a large budget and released wide in the summer of 1975.
With this in mind, you can find “Jaws” DNA in countless other films: creature features, action movies, supernatural thrillers and even some of Mr. Spielberg’s later blockbusters. Here’s how it works:
1 The Creature
Almost anything can be a creature in a monster movie.
Yes, there are sharks galore, but we also found killer whales (“Orca,” 1977), piranhas (“Piranha,” 1978), octopuses (“Tentacles,” 1977), alligators (“Alligator,” 1980) and crocodiles (“Rogue,” 2007). And on land: grizzly bears (“Grizzly,” 1976), carnivorous worms (“Tremors,” 1990), wild boar (“Razorback,” 1984), dinosaurs (“Jurassic Park,” 1993) and 40-foot snakes (“Anaconda,” 1997). Even the tornadoes in “Twister” (1996) or the viral outbreak in “Contagion” (2011) are like living forces whose patterns of destruction are much like the shark’s in “Jaws.”
Crucially, in “Jaws” we don’t actually see the shark until well into the second hour. This was reportedly not intentional — the shark was portrayed by a full-size animatronic puppet that rarely worked on command.
“There were a lot less shark shots in the film, probably, than what they originally planned,” said Dennis Muren, a retired visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic. “But it helped the film so much.”
Mr. Muren worked with Mr. Spielberg on TKseven of his films, including “Jurassic Park“ and “War of the Worlds” (2005).
In many of these films, the creature is at first withheld, either by necessity or design. In “Jurassic Park” we hear (and feel) the T. rex’s footsteps well before we see it.
“When you first see the T. rex breaking through the fence,” Mr. Muren said, referring to the creature’s introduction an hour into the film, “how well do you want to see him?”
Note how in many of these films, the creature is onscreen for sometimes no more than a few minutes. In “Razorback,” which is just over 90 minutes long, there is no shot of the creature, in full or out of shadow, that lasts more than a few seconds.
“Not showing the shark means the shark is forever the creature in our minds,” Matt Singer, critic and author of “Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever,” said in an interview. “Even the best special effects of any time can’t measure up to the horrors that you can conceive in your mind.”
2 The Remote Location
The location is key to the suspense. The characters are often isolated from outside help, ill-prepared or otherwise limited in how far they can run or hide.
The bulk of “Jaws” is set on an island; nearly the last hour takes place entirely on a boat on the open sea.
The ocean is a natural and frequently used setting. Other stories happen in the frigid outskirts of Antarctica (“The Thing,” 1982), the vast Australian Outback (“Razorback”) or the expanses of the Kenyan wilderness (“The Ghost and the Darkness,” 1996).
Two scuba-diving thrillers, “Open Water” (2003) and “The Reef” (2010), up the ante by dispensing with land altogether, isolating characters entirely in water frequented by (what else?) sharks.
And “Alien,” set in the far reaches of outer space, is more isolated than any of these films. The crew of a spaceship is light years away from earth — a hazardous scenario even without the alien slithering around the ship’s dark corridors.
3 The First Victim
An early, anonymous death is a longstanding horror tradition. In “Jaws,” it’s a young woman skinny-dipping at dusk. The shark snatches her away minutes into the film. Her gnarled remains wash ashore the next morning.
“Who gets killed is very important,” said John Sayles, a filmmaker who began his career working for Mr. Corman. Mr. Sayles wrote both “Piranha” (1978) and “Alligator” (1980); both knowingly resemble “Jaws.” “Very often the first people you get killed are marginal people,” he said. “We haven’t even met them yet.”
The first victim establishes what the creature can do without showing it. In the Nevada-set “Tremors” (1990), the first victim is found clinging to the top of a telephone pole, apparently having preferred to starve than descend back to the ground.
Some aren’t even human. In “Kingdom of the Spiders” (1977), a cow is cornered and dispatched by small, eight-legged predators.
4 The Reluctant Hero
Someone has to face the creature — often someone who doesn’t want to, but does so out of moral obligation. In “Jaws,” that person is the local police chief, Brody.
Amy Nicholson, film critic for The Los Angeles Times, described his archetype as “the only person who sees the problem clearly, the person that nobody trusts because they don’t think he gets a say in the matter.”
“But I think the way that Spielberg sketches Brody has a subtlety that I don’t think most copycats get right,” she said. “You just see him pour a giant glug of red wine” into his glass of liquor “because he cannot handle how bad things are getting.”
Brody is openly afraid — making him alert to how dangerous the creature is. “Arachnophobia” (1990) is about a small-town doctor whose chief characteristic is indicated in the film’s title. Naturally, spiders invade his house by the end.
The heroes are also usually parents or caretakers. In “Jaws,” Brody has three children, one of them nearly taken by the shark. In “The Host” (2006), Gang-du risks his life diving into the Han River, where a creature has taken his daughter.
5 The Local Authority
The creatures, deadly as they are, aren’t necessarily evil.
“They gotta eat something,” said Mr. Sayles of the swarm of genetically engineered piranha descending upon a popular lake resort in “Piranha.” “If it’s somebody who sticks their foot in the water, they’re not trying to be mean, they are just being piranha.”
And piranhas, like most of the creatures, don’t talk. The conflicts in these stories need to be amplified by other people. That’s where the local authority comes in.
“It’s like a board game and you have these obstacles,” Mr. Sayles said. “What are the human obstacles?”
In “Jaws,” it’s Mayor Vaughn, who insists on keeping the town beaches open after the shark’s rampage begins. He displays all the characteristics of the local authority — greed, condescension, arrogance, moral indifference.
These characters like to talk loudly on the phone and favor garish blazers (“Tentacles,” 1977; “Up from the Depths,” 1979). Some even confront the creature themselves and perish in spectacular fashion (“Great White,” 1982; “Anaconda,” 1996).
6 The Experts
Our heroes are often ill-equipped to defeat the creatures on their own, so they enlist experts — or are forced to work with them.
In “Jaws,” Brody finds himself in an uneasy alliance with two experts, who are mostly incompatible: an oceanographer named Hooper and a bedraggled fisherman named Quint.
“I don’t know if I could make the case that any of our clashing protagonists, for lack of a better word, are right about how to deal with the shark,” Ms. Nicholson said. “The problem is so much bigger than you think.”
In these films, the experts help the heroes while making their job harder in other ways. They have traits critical in defeating the creature, but they’re often too narrow-minded to survive.
“Great White” (1981), “Razorback” (1984), “Jurassic Park” and “The Ghost and the Darkness” (1996) all feature hyper-focused, hardscrabble hunter-like characters armed with huge guns. Like Quint, the “Jaws” fisherman, they all die in the end.
Unusually, “Species” (1995) has only experts, and no traditional hero. When a rapidly evolving and very attractive alien played by Natasha Henstridge is on the loose in Los Angeles, an anthropologist, a molecular biologist, an empath and an armed mercenary band together to stop her. (She seduces and kills the anthropologist.)
7 The Sacrifice
Usually before the end, there needs to be one more death — one that hits harder, or surprises the audience, in a way that brings home the threat of the creature. If the first victim is anonymous and early, the sacrifice comes later with someone we know well.
Quint is eaten by the shark nearly two hours into the film, after he’s become endeared to the audience with his playful combativeness and affinity for crude sea shanties.
There’s a hierarchy to victims in these films. Describing his titular “Alligator,” Mr. Sayles said, “Let’s have him come up in a poor neighborhood and start eating people there, and nobody starts paying attention until it gets to the middle class.”
Eventually, to keep the audience on its toes, films started positioning the sacrifice at unexpected points.
About 40 minutes into “Deep Blue Sea” (1999), an executive played by Samuel L. Jackson gives a speech to reassure his distraught comrades. A mako shark yanks him midsentence into oblivion.
“There is a moment in this movie when something happens that is completely unexpected,” said Roger Ebert in his review, “and the audience laughs in delight because it was so successfully surprised.”
8 The Confrontation
The final confrontation is typically between the creature and reluctant hero. It’s also often the first time the creature is fully visible.
Five minutes before the end of “Jaws,” our police chief is left to face the shark on a sinking boat using tools left by his allies — an oxygen tank from Hooper (which he tosses into the shark’s mouth) and a rifle from Quint.
Other movies draw out their confrontations. In “The Shallows” (2016), an injured surfer spends the bulk of the film stranded on a rocky outcrop patrolled by a shark. Near the start of “Crawl” (2019), the hero is trapped in a flooded basement with at least one vicious alligator.
9 The Creature’s End
Now comes the moment the audience has been waiting for. It’s also frequently the moment the director gets to bend reality in favor of pure spectacle.
Mr. Spielberg was not a fan of the way Peter Benchley’s original “Jaws” novel ended.
“He said to me, ‘The ending of the book is a downer,’” Mr. Benchley said in a 1995 interview. (The shark dies mostly of exhaustion.) “‘That is not a big rousing ending. And I need a big rousing ending.’”
For over two hours, the rising tension in “Jaws” is carefully calibrated. But Mr. Spielberg cast that restraint aside in the last few moments. He didn’t think viewers would mind.
Just before his boat sinks, Brody fires his rifle at the oxygen tank in the shark’s maw. The shark explodes. Blood and viscera rain down in resplendent slow motion.
It’s not the most realistic sequence of events. But according to Mr. Benchley, Mr. Spielberg said, “If I have got them for two hours, they will believe whatever I do for the next three minutes.”
Those three minutes have become one of the film’s most influential hallmarks.
In “Leviathan” (1989), a giant sea creature explodes after a bomb is thrown into its mouth. In “Tremors” (1990), one of the giant worms swallows a pipe bomb; its guts rain down afterward. In Mr. Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds” (2005), one of the enormous, tripodal alien invaders is felled after it’s fed a belt of grenades. And in “Nope” (2022), a large extraterrestrial invader ingests a cowboy-shaped balloon that pops. Then the creature disintegrates.
“‘Jaws’ hangs over you a little bit if you write for Stephen,” said David Koepp, who has been a writer in several Spielberg films, including “Jurassic Park” and “War of the Worlds.”
”One of the first things you have to do is forget that you’re talking to Steven Spielberg and try to be a collaborator and not a fan.”
Below, you’ll find the complete results of our analysis, showing how closely the films we watched follow the “Jaws” blueprint. Our judgments are inescapably subjective and unscientific, but they yielded some surprises: “Twister,” set in rural Oklahoma, is a closer match than “Open Water,” set in shark-infested waters.
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